Beneath the Surface of Safety

Previously

…I closed the bedroom door softly behind me, the click of the latch a small, final sound in the overwhelming silence. I stood in the dimly lit hallway, the weight of my actions settling upon me. I had kept them safe. I had protected my family. But I had also reminded myself of the monster I kept locked away. And the monster, it seemed, was always just beneath the surface, waiting for its moment to emerge. The night was long, and the dawn, I suspected, would bring with it a reckoning of a different kind. The reckoning within myself. The true cost of safety, I was beginning to understand, was a price paid in pieces of one’s soul.